Warmth and Competence Perceptions of Female Job Candidates: Who Gets Hired?

This study explores how warmth and competence perceptions affect hireability of a female job candidate. The mixed model of stereotype content identifies warmth and competence as the two basic dimensions of person-perception, and research has shown a compensatory relationship between these two dimensions, especially for women. This study explores this compensatory effect for women in a hiring situation. Two samples, one of college students (n = 301) and another of MTurk participants (n = 256), read a description of a female job candidate of either high or low competence and either high, low, or no mention of warmth, and then rated her hireability. Candidates had the greatest hireability when high in competence, and competence had a greater effect on hireability than warmth. Warmth and competence perceptions were positively related, reflecting a halo effect, such that higher warmth was inferred from higher competence. Implications for hiring decisions of female professionals are discussed. WARMTH AND COMPETENCE PERCEPTIONS 3 In the past 60 years, the number of women in the workforce has increased dramatically, giving rise to discourse surrounding hiring discrimination and wage inequality in the US. Women now make up 47% of the workforce as opposed to only 30% in 1950 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey), and data suggest that women are still facing both overt and subtle inequality in the workplace. For every dollar men make, women make 78 cents, a gender wage gap of 22% (Institute for Women’s Policy Research), even though women are earning post-secondary degrees at a faster rate than men. While some portion of this gap may be the result of women’s professional decisions, job preference, and socio-economic factors, a large portion of the wage gap remains unexplained by these factors, indicating that some women still face employment discrimination. A study done by the American Association of University Women, for example found that even when controlling for factors like years of experience, marital status, and GPA, there was still an observable difference in earnings between women and men in the same job. Furthermore, the unemployment rate is higher for women than men at all education levels, though the gap decreases as women gain higher levels of education. Of the women who are employed, the majority work in traditionally female-oriented positions (e.g. teachers, nurses) as opposed to higher-paying, traditionally male-oriented positions, and the glass ceiling still prevents women from rising in the ranks of an organization. Management, for example, is a field where there is still a significant gender disparity, with women holding only 39% of managerial positions today (U.S. Department of Labor, 2013). WARMTH AND COMPETENCE PERCEPTIONS 4 Understanding the factors that may contribute to this disparity is an important step in fostering equality for women in the workplace and society at large. While a significant amount of psychological research has been devoted to the study of attitudes toward women and the prevalence of stereotyping and gender discrimination, there has been limited research on how these factors play out in the workplace, specifically in a hiring situation. This may be due to the highly subjective and ambiguous nature of hiring decisions, the difficulty of assessing the subconscious processes that may underlie discrimination, and the lack of field data on who actually gets hired, who doesn’t, and why. Consequently, hiring decisions are one of the least understood aspects of inequality in the workplace (Peterson & Togstad, 2004). The present study aims to address these gaps in the literature by exploring the role that social perceptions, namely the two fundamental dimensions of warmth and competence, play in hiring decisions for female